Surprise! We're going to Disney!

[lnuss1988]

Hello All!

We are planning our trip for end of January 2022.

This will be the first time for everyone (DH, Two DD and DS) except myself.

My DH and I decided to surprise our kids with the trip, but we are trying to figure out the best way to tell them.

My question is, what has everyone done for "the big reveal?"

 

[MrsSLF]

We surprised my daughter with a January 2020 trip by having her complete a scavenger hunt during Christmas. I found the clues and everything online so I just had to print and place them around our house. My daughter has been countless times and was still so excited for her surprise. We're planning on surprising her for our trip this year by making one of her birthday presents (her birthday is at the end of May) a box with balloons and a sign that she's going to WDW (also found it online, I think Pinterest).

 

[easyas123]

We did this, once.
We had a Feb. trip planned, so surprised the kids for Christmas. Went over like a lead balloon, they couldn't have cared less. I'm not sure if it was because it was the holidays and so much else going on or just our kids...this was their first trip, we were very much more excited than them. They were 5 & 7 for the first trip, and we took them a few times over the years but WDW never appealed to them and we only did a few family trips there.

 

[BishopsMoM]

We surprised the kids this past December with a trip. We told them that we had to open some Christmas gifts early with their grandmother because she was not going to be with us on Christmas Day like she normally is. When they came home from school that day there was all of the presents plus one large present under the tree. They opened all of their gifts from Grandma and Mom and Dad first then got to open the big gift last. Inside was the start of a scavenger hunt from our elves. (Don't know how old your kids are, but our kids still believe in the elves and the elves are always having them do fun little games). The scavenger hunt ended at the car and when they opened the back of the car everything was packed and ready to go. We left right then for Disney World. Our kids have been multiple times and were bummed because they did not think we were getting to go in 2020 because of covid, so this worked out great for us. However, we tried to surprise them on one of their first trips by saying we were going somewhere else and then actually went to Disney. We didn't tell them till we got to the Orlando airport where we were really going. That surprise did not go over well, because they were already anticipating going somewhere else. LOL So learn from our mistake and don't try that one. LOL. When my son was too young to read, we made a shirt that said "I am going to Disney". We didn't tell him what it said and the first person at the airport that saw his shirt told him. It was fun to have a complete stranger be a part of the surprise.

 

[Jtrem]

I wanted to surprise the kids with a Disney trip. We had already gone twice so thought a surprise would be fun (first time went they were under 1, 2, 5). Woke everyone up early in the morning (like 4 am) and said surprise we’re going to Disney. 4 year old put head down to go back to sleep. 6 year got really excited and was happy that we’d be going on an airplane; when we said we were driving proceeded to start to cry. 8 year old was excited but not crazy. Definitely was not the reactions I expected, but we laugh to this day about the crying when told driving.
Headed again in 2022, hoping to pull off a surprise with tacking on a trip to universal (we haven’t been) for my Harry Potter loving daughter.

 

[tinkerjo]

Surprises are great but just surprise them enough ahead of time to let them enjoy in some of the planning. Even if they are fairly young they can watch videos on YouTube of the parks and resort( my kids didn’t have a choice on resorts) otherwise I would have been broke) I am a firm believer that the anticipation heightens the trip enjoyment!!

 

[Daisy7425]

My good friend gave her two girls a stack of envelopes each with a word/picture that spelled we are going to Disney (like Mickey ears for Disney or a picture of them for the word "we", the letter R for are, 2 for to). They had to put them together to make the sentence make sense. I like how she did this because she surprised them with the news about four months ahead of time so that they could watch YouTube videos of rides, read books about Disney from library, study the maps together, etc.

We have just told my kid when we book the trips because we just love talking about the planning together. Honestly one huge happy thing about trips to me is planning, discussing, debating plans.

I've read on here about picking kids up from school with full suitcases and driving them to the airport. I'm not a fan of that for myself personally because I need to mentally prepare for an airplane ride and a vacation. I wouldn't like to be surprised with that and then immediately go.

 

[easyas123]

We surprised our boys with their first trip at Christmas-trip was in February- it went over like a lead balloon